Wes Craven gave birth to a wicked idea for a horror film which in turn stacked up 6 sequels from his 1984 original. The first "Nightmare on Elm Street" gave us the story of Fred Kruger, a child murderer who was hunted down by the parents of the slain children and killed. However, Freddy (as he is called) is now haunting teens even though he is dead. How does his reach his victims? In their dreams...

The fourth installment of A Nightmare on Elm Street released in 1988 is named The Dream Master. And the Dream Master doesn't pertain to Freddy but a young woman who has gained the power to take control of her nightmares. And her name is Alice. I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 The Dream Master when I was 12 years old at the theater and was all excited cause I was really into the 'Freddy Movies' and when the film was over I wasn't disappointed. I was defiantly digging it in that 1988 kind of way.

The Dream Master takes up right where Nightmare on Elm Street 3 left off. Kristen, (No longer played by Patricia Arquette but by Tuesday Knight) is now out of the mental hospital and trying to get a normal existence going. But she is still worried about Freddy and her nightmares don't seem to be ending. And sure enough, Freddy makes it clear to poor Kristen that he's still very much around. He returns to her dreams with deadly consequences. But in Kristen's final encounter with Freddy, she unwillingly pulls her friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) into the dream and transfers her own 'dream warrior' powers to her. This of course freaks the shit out of Alice but Freddy is happy as hell because now he has a girl who has the ability to pull any and all of her friends into her dreams. It's all Fresh Meat for Freddy.

Alice is now tormented by Freddy while she helplessly brings him new teens to torment and kill. However, with each death, Alice gains her friends traits and their 'powers'. With one friend she takes in their wisdom, with another their martial arts ability. (Yeah it's kinda cheesy but it's an 80's horror film.) So, needless to say, by the time most of her friends are gone, Alice has built up a nice stack of abilities to take on Freddy with. And so with this power, Alice prepares herself to go head to head with Freddy in hopes that she can stop him.

And what concludes A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is a totally radical, kung fu fighting, all out battle with Freddy who in turn gets a royal ass kicking courtesy of Alice.

This one was directed by Renny Harlin and I'd say this is one of his best efforts. And of course that's not saying much. But he does stay quite true to the first Nightmare which is nice to see. The music as well harkers back to the original with the same eerie theme. This gave the film a more authentic feel rather than just the typical 'throw-together slash em up and get it over with' frame of mind that most other sequels suffer from. Also, I noticed Harlin's nightmare sequences are much more dream-like than the previous two sequels. The nightmares here are filled with a great deal more of the 'freaky randomness' which pervades the bad dreams most people really have. I'm sure it's very hard for a director to capture that moment in a nightmare when nothing is making any sense and yet, there are scary things circling about you and you feel a hazy fear which is telling you something bad is going to happen, then it does. But I think Renny Harlin understood the first one enough and this film is a respectable sequel on most counts.

Lisa Wilcox, who plays Alice, definitely helps it along because she has a nice solid acting ability for this kind of film. She enters as a shy, mousy girl and exits an ass kicker. And she is pretty convincing too. The rest of the cast's acting goes from pretty good to slightly 'run of the mill 80's camp', but for the most part I wasn't shaking my head in disbelief. I was into it.

PS. Fave scene.---When Alice's friend Debbie (Brooke Thiessen?) has a nightmare and her arms brake off and from her nubs sprout roach legs.---

I think this is probably one of the best sequels to the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series. Despite it's hokey moments, the Nightmares are strong and the ending was cool. Not bad I say. *** 3 Stars